First I'd like to thanks all those sunny people who came to our Solstice event in Zen.

For us it was certainly a night to remember .....you know ... one of those nights that you dread.  First of all the speaker we had booked, Nigel Mortimer,  cancelled on the Friday as the Solstice was on Saturday. umm so that's 1/12 hours to fill - mind you we had lots of activities to offer so we just got it together with some of those things planned in.  We should have practised with the fire !!!  We were planning to have the meal nicely served at the end of the talk but without the talk well (chaos) Then the soup kettle decided to blow a fuse or whatever soup kettles do, so each bowl of soup had to be heated individually in the micorwave  and you know ... it just went on from there.  So we didn't have a lot of time to socialise have a chat or two and get to know some lovely people who had come for the first time (aghh what must they think) or friends who we hadn't seen for ages.

So apologies for our sparce presence.

Hey but it wan't all bad, good sports that they were most people let me loose with their faces (paint) and got some flowers etc on them.

Despite it all we enjoyed ourselves and hope that all who attended had a good meal and a good socialising event.

Through the pictures on the slide show you can follow some of the activities.

Our little buddha standing duty at the front door was treated to a home made flower and leaf garland and as people stepped into our centre from the street their path was strewn with leaves to walk along.  Our fire ball was at the front door.

People were greeted with a tray of canapes (and I think they thought that was all they were getting) with a chilled lemon balm herb drink.  While we waited for everyone to arrive and some unexpected people too I started to work doing a bit of face painting on willing volunteers.

When everyone had arrived and got to know each other we honoured the solstice with an introduction by Barry and a meditation for a few moments on the heat of the summer sunshine and the power of that energy.  Meanwhile i was preparing the soup - summer garden soup.

Then we moved onto the main course and that was burgers, sausage, filled potatoes skins with curry cheese or florets & cheese.  There was mixed chargrilled vegetables and summer slaw salad, herb salad and rocket salad, pizza too but the finale was the sweet that was a representation of the sun designed by Barry (you will see the pics).

The activity you can see with petals was a mandala making exericise that could be taken home and meditated upon.  there were some brilliant designs but I have to give James the biscuit.  Rebel that he is it was no circle but it was a fantastic piece of artwork - and now he's hooked, he wants to do more.

We thought for a moment or two about our wishes and meditated on the energy of the sun helping us to acheive our objectives.  We wrote a simple sentence and then tied it around a home made wreath.  When all the wishes were on the wreath we offered it to the fire to have a reiforcement of energy to help us achieve.

We finalised with a prayer read out from a scrit that was given to everyone and a candle meditation around the candles you can see in the pics.